CAF Awards 2019: How football administrators rob Nigeria of top honours

CAF Awards 2019: How football administrators rob Nigeria of top honours

Falling short: NFF President Amaju Pinnick has yet to demonstrate a remarkable departure from the past

Afolabi Gambari

Some things are unbelievably crazy! Here is one of such: between 1993 and 1999, Nigeria had produced four African footballer award winners –namely Rashidi Yekini, Emmanuel Amunike, Victor Ikpeba and Nwankwo Kanu – with Kanu winning it twice in 1996 and 1999. Another Nigerian could have clinched the 2000 award had Cameroon not won the Africa Cup of Nations earlier in the year after the Indomitable Lions edged the Super Eagles via penalty shoot-outs in the final and had Cameroon not also won the Sydney 2000 Olympics football gold medal, which made Patrick Mboma the undisputed winner, the striker having also already steered his country to the AFCON success.

But it has been 21 years now. Nigeria has not only disappeared from the range of Africa’s best footballers, but the situation could well have led many followers of African football wondering when Nigeria will bounce back to reckoning. To be fair, though, a few of Nigerian players have managed to have their heads above water in the European leagues. But the snag is that they ply their trade at lesser clubs that hardly project their status.

It is usual that the footballers are blamed for reasons ranging from dwindling standards and wrong career decisions. But the whole blame lies on the successive administrators of football in Nigeria within the 21 years under review. Every administration easily mouthed ‘youth development’ which often turned out to be mere lip service. Well gone are the days when cadet and junior players were carefully scouted with a view to having them graduate to the senior team. Over the years, the focus has been just gathering poorly scouted players to represent the country at major competitions. The poor results have been predictable, however, but nonetheless they have had disruptive, if not destructive, influence on the senior team. Hundreds of players have participated in the cadet and junior competitions, especially from 2001 to date.

Curiously, only a negligible few have made the mark. The situation has led the administrators to practically scamper around Europe in search of players of Nigerian descent to “fill in the space”. The fire brigade approach has tended to shore up the senior team, somewhat. But consistency in performance has been less certain, leading to situations where much is expected but less is given.

The foregoing needless confusion is a direct result of lack of focus on the part of the administrators as well as the absence of a functional technical department in the football federation. It can only be a huge mystery that a quick-fix approach seems to be more attractive to the administrators than a methodical plan.

As the 2019 CAF Awards holds in Cairo tonight, Senegal, Egypt and Algeria will parade Sadio Mane, Mohamed Salah and Riyad Mahrez respectively as their ‘present’. All that Nigeria, supposed super power of African football, will parade are its own ‘future’, namely Samuel Chukwueze and Victor Osimhen. There lies the difference between Nigeria and the rest of Africa.

Questions can be asked with regard to if and when Nigerian footballers will regain their lost top spots in Africa. But let no one look further than the football administrators for the right answers.

Top to bottom: Rashidi Yekini, Emmanuel Amunike, Nwankwo Kanu and Victor Ikpeba dominated the African Footballer Awards in the 1990s before the drought set in